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under construction just a workspace to work out bugs prior to launching real page. Stories Ma Nature Shamanism The Papalagi ---- :::::HsinHsinMing ::::::(with commentary) :THERE IS NOTHING DIFFICULT ABOUT THE GREAT WAY, :BUT, AVOID CHOOSING! :We suffer, at one and the same time, from excessive pride and :excessive humility. On the one hand, our intellect rushes in :where angels fear to tread. On the other hand, we are too humble :before the Buddhas and saints, not realizing that we too are the :Buddha, as the "Avatamsaka" ("Kegonkyo") declares: :''The mind, the Buddha, living creatures, -- these are not three different things. :Haiku are divided, rather arbitrarily, into seven sections: :The Season, Sky and Elements, Fields and Mountains, Gods and Buddhas, :Human Affairs, Animals and Birds, Trees and Flowers. :With all these but one, the fifth, in the petals of the barley leaf, :the tender smile on the lips of Kwannon, the moonlight on the valley :stream, the voices of insects in autumn, the coldness of winter, :we can see the Great Way that stretches out in every direction, :throughout past, present and future. :But when we come to man, to ourselves, it is a different story. :''So, beneath the starry dome :''And the floor of plains and seas, :''I have never felt at home, :''Never wholly been at ease. :''The First Day of the Year: :''I remember :''A lonely autumn evening. :~ Basho ~ :''Scattering rice too, :''This is a sin: :''The fowls are fighting each other. :~ Issa ~ :In "The Sphinx", Emerson tells us: :''Erect as a sunbeam, :''Upspringeth the palm; :''The elephant browses, :''Undaunted and calm. :''But man crouches and blushes, :''Absconds and conceals; :''He creepeth and peepeth, :''He palters and steals. :In other words, Sengtsan, in declaring that the Way in not :difficult, is flatly contradicting the experience of mankind both :in regard to the complexities of ordinary life and the perception :of the natural poetry of apparently unpoetical things. :His meaning is faintly adumbrated by the well known verse of Yamazaki :Sokan, d. 1553, included in a collection of poems he made called :"Inutsukuba": :''How I wish to kill! :''How I wish :''Not to kill! :''The thief I have caught :''Is my own son. :This corresponds to the English proverb, :''He who follows truth too closely, will have dirt kicked into his face. :''It is the very search, and the excessive zeal of it, which causes the :''truth to disappear. In our hot grasp the truth wilts away. :''There is no one :''Who dyes them, :''But of themselves :''The willow is green, :''The flowers red. :If we just remain quiet, and live in all simplicity, no problems arise. :''Were I a king, pensively :''Would I pace the corridors of the palace. :''The path I walk goes through the pine-trees; :''The sea is blue, a butterfly flits by. ~ Miyoshi Tatsuji :Sengtsan attributes all our uneasiness, our dissatisfaction with :ourselves and other people, our inability to understand why we are :alive at all, to one great cause: choosing this and rejecting that, :clinging to the one and loathing the other. :There is a profound saying: :''The flowers fall, for all our yearning; :''Grasses grow, regardless of our dislike. :Other verses that express this fact of the life that comes from :the death of self and its wants and distastes, are the following: :''Just get rid :''Of that small mind :''That is called "self", :''And there is nothing in the universe :''That can harm or hinder you. :''How delightful it is :''To make all space :''Our dwelling place! :''Our hearts and minds :''Are perfectly at ease. :D.H.Lawrence says the same thing in "Kangaroo": :''Home again. But what was home? The fish has vast ocean for home. :''And man has timelessness and nowhere. "I won't delude myself with :''the fallacy of home", he said to himself. "The four walls are a :''blanket I wrap around in, in timelessness and nowhere, to go to :''sleep". :ONLY WHEN YOU NEITHER LOVE NOR HATE :DOES IT APPEAR IN ALL CLARITY :There is love and Love, but only hate; there is no such thing as :Hate. In Love is included that which might be called Hate, what :Lawrence calls "the dark side of love". In so far as we love, in :the sense of being attached to a thing, we hate. In so far as we :Love, whether it be with pain or joy, the Way is walked in by us, :we are the Way. Ryoto, a pupil of Basho, says: :''Yield to the willow :''All the loathing, :''All the desire of your heart. :Another didactic verse is the following: :''In my hut this spring, :''There is nothing, :''There is everything. :~ Sodo ~ (1641-1716) :A HAIR'S BREADTH OF DEVIATION FROM IT, :AND A DEEP GULF IS SET BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH. :A miss is as good as a mile. The slightest thought of self, that :is, by self, and the Great Way is irretrievably lost. A drop of :ink, and a glass of clear water is all clouded. Once we think, :"This flower is blooming for me; this insect is a hateful :nuisance and nothing else; that man is a useful rascal; that :woman is a good mother, and she must therefore be a good wife", :-- when such thoughts arise in our minds, all the cohesion :between things disappear; they rattle about in a meaningless and :irritating way. Instead of being united into a whole by virtue of :their own interpenetrated suchness, they are pulled hither and :thither by our arbitrary and ever-changing preferences, out whims :and prejudices. We suppose this particular man to be a Buddha, :ourselves to be ordinary people, this action to be charming, that :to be odious, and fail to see how "All things work for good" :(Romans VIII, 28). In actual fact, Heaven and Earth cannot be :separated; one cannot exist without the other. :Together they are the Great Way. :The two points to bear in mind are first the nearness of the Way :and second, its corollary, the fact that we and the Way are not :two things. It seems so far that we can never attain to it: :''Far, far from here :''Is the Heavenly Land, :''A million million miles away; :''We can hardly get there :''On just one pair of straw sandals. :But as Ikkyu punningly says: :''Paradise is in the West; :''It is in the East also. :''Look for it in the North :''That you came through, :''It is all in yourself (the South). :is a pun on the Japanese words : *minami*, south, and *mina mi*, all oneself. :The moment you place your happiness in the fulfillment of any want :or wish, that is, outside yourself, outside the Way, in anything :but the thing as it is, as it is becoming, at that moment your :balance is lost and you fall straight from Heaven to Hell. :Things are one; things are many. The intellect cannot grasp these :two simultaneously, but experience can, if it will. If we fall, :only by a hair's breadth, into the error of supposing that we are :different, weariness and envy and triumph and shame and fear :succeed one another in an endless train. We must be in the :condition that Paul describes: :''Who is weak and I am not weak? :''Who is offended and I burn not? (Corinthians, XI, 29) :If this state could only be attained, we can say of man with :Matthew Arnold in "A Summer Night": :''How boundless might his soul's horizons be, :''How vast, yet of what clear transparency. :IF YOU WANT TO GET HOLD OF WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE, :DO NOT BE ANTI OR PRO ANYTHING. :Since the Great Way is one, it is impossible for us to be for :this, and aiding that which needs no aid. There is a certain :current, a Flow of the universe. We may swim with it or against :it, float in the middle of the stream or stagnate in a :back-water, but nothing we can do will accelerate or retard that :Flow. Yet his Flow is not something separate from ourselves; it :is our own flowing; we are not corks bobbing up and down on a :stream of inevitability. It is not as Fitzgerald says: :''The Ball no question makes of Ayes or Noes, :''But Here or There as strikes the Player goes. :Or rather, it would be better to say that this is true, and that :Henley's words are equally true, not in alternation but :synchronously: :''I am the master of my fate; :''I am the captain of my soul. :This submergence and assertion of self, this living fully without :taking sides which Sengtsan urges upon us, is the poetical life. :The unpoetical life is of two kinds. First, by aversion, we live :in a limited world, a half-world. Second, by infatuation, we :exaggerate, sentimentalize, weary by repetition. :THE CONFLICT OF LONGING AND LOATHING, :THIS IS JUST THE DISEASE OF THE MIND. :Something arises which pleases the mind, which fits in with our :notions of what is profitable for us, -- and we love it. :Something arises which thwarts us, which conflicts with our :wants, and we hate it. So long as we possess this individual :mind, enlightenment and delusion, pain and pleasure, accepting :and rejecting, good and bad toss us up and down on the waves of :existence, never moving onwards, always the same restlessness and :wabbling, the same fear of woe and insecurity of joy. So :Wordsworth say, in the "Ode to Duty": :''My hopes must no more change their name. :In addition, the mirror of our mind being distorted, nothing :appears in its natural, its original form. The louse appears a :dirty, loathsome thing, the lion a noble creature. But when we :see the louse as it really is, it is not merely neutral thing; it :is something to be accepted as inevitable in our mortal life, as :in Basho's verse: :''Fleas, lice, :''The horse pissing :''By my pillow. :It may be seen as something charming and meaningful as in Issa's haiku: :''Giving the breast, :''While counting :''The flea-bites. :There is nothing intrinsically more beautiful or poetical about :the moon than about a dunghill; if anything, the contrary, for :the latter is full of life and warmth and energy. :The "Vaipulya-mahavyuha Sutra" says: :''The lotus arises form the mud, but is not dyed therewith. :This is expressed less ambitiously in the following waka: :''Just get rid of :''The mind that thinks :"This is good, that is bad", :And without any special effort, :''Wherever we live is good to live in. :Quite devoid of sententiousness or literary ambition, with no :longing or loathing, Basho's verse on the mountain violets: :''Coming along the path, :''There is something touching :''About these violets. :NOT KNOWING THE PROFOUND MEANING OF THINGS, :WE DISTURB OUR (ORIGINAL) PEACE OF MIND TO NO PURPOSE. :When we are in the Way, when we act without live or hate, hope or :despair of indifference, the meaning of things if self-evident, :not merely impossible but unnecessary to express. Conversely, :while we are looking for the significance of things, it is :non-existent. Our original nature is one of perfect harmony with :the universe, a harmony not of similarity or correspondence nut of :identity. The "Tsaikentan" ("Seikontan") Hung Yingming. fl. :1600 A.D. A compound of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. :says: :''The mind that is free form itself, -- why should it look within? :''This introspection taught by Buddha only increases the :''obstruction. Things are originally one; why then should we :''endeavour to unite them? Chuangtse preached the identity of :''contraries, thus dividing up that unity. :PERFECT LIKE GREAT SPACE, :THE WAY HAS NOTHING LACKING, NOTHING IN EXCESS. :Without beginning, without end, without increase or decrease, the :Great Way is perfect, like a circle, with nothing too small in :the smallest thing, nothing too large in the largest. And this :perfection in the dew-drop and in the solar system we are :enabled to see, we are driven to see, by the perfection in :ourselves. Beyond all this confusion and asymmetry there is a :deep harmony and proportion without us and within us that :satisfies us when we submit to it, when we take it as it is, but :can never be perceived or conceived intellectually. This supreme :Form of Things is called "Formlessness" in the "Hannyashingyo": :''All things are formless, without growth or decay, without purity :''or sin, without increase or decrease. :In poetry the three are expressed as follows: :''Age cannot wither her not custom stale :''Her infinite variety. :("Anthony and Cleopatra", II, 2) :''The young girl :''Blew her nose :''In the evening glory. :~ Issa ~ :''The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; :''the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall. :(Bacon, "Of Goodness") :In poetry as in life, too much soon wearies. This is why we turn :to Virgil, to Chaucer, to Basho. The circle expresses this :moderation however large or small it may be. In the Oxherding :pictures used in Zen, it portrays serenity. The circular mirror :is used in Shinto. Emerson has an essay on Circles. :TRULY, BECAUSE OF OUR ACCEPTING AND REJECTING, :WE HAVE NOT THE SUCHNESS OF THINGS. :Our state of mind is not to be fatalistic, saying of bad things, :"It can't be helped", and of good things, "What difference does :it make?" It must be to want what the universe wants, in the way :it wants it, in that place, at that time. This wanting *is* the :Way, this wanting *is* the suchness of things; there is no Way, :no suchness apart from it. :The suchness of things is what the poet is looking for, listening :to, smelling, and tasting. And in so far as he and we listen and :touch and see, the suchness has an existence, a meaning, a value. :Unless we taste the world, it is tasteless; it is void of :suchness. But this tasting is not to be a choosing, tasting some :and not tasting others. Hung Yingming, following Chuangtse, and :using almost the same words as Sengtsan, says: :''All the things in heaven and earth, all human emotions, :''all the things that happen in the world, when looked at :''by the unenlightened eye, are seen as multifarious and :''disparate. When viewed by the Eye of the Way, all this :''variety is uniformity; why should we distinguish them, :''why accept these and reject those? :NEITHER FOLLOW AFTER, NOR DWELL WITH :THE DOCTRINE OF THE VOID. :We are not to be beguiled by the senses, by the apparent :differences of things. :''Rain, hail and snow, :''Ice too, are set apart, :''But when they fall, -- :''The same water :''Of the valley stream. :On the other hand, we are not to fall into the opposite error of :taking all things as unreal and meaningless. This is the basis of :much of the poetical thinking of Swinburne, of Shelley and Byron. :It tinges the poetry of Matthew Arnold, Clough, Christina :Rossetti. It is the basis of all passive, quietistic thought. :Both these extreme views are wrong; Yungchia describes the :position in the following way: :''Getting rid of things and clinging to emptiness :''Is an illness of the same kind; :''It is just like throwing oneself into a fire :''To avoid being drowned. :IF THE MIND IS AT PEACE, :THESE WRONG VIEWS DISAPPEAR OF THEMSELVES. :Dogen has a waka: :''Ever the same, :''Unchanged of hue, :''Cherry blossoms :''Of my native place: :''Spring now has gone. :Here the eternal and temporal, the unchanged and changing are :one, because the flowers are allowed to be the same colour as :always; they are allowed to fall as always. The flowers are not :separated, in their blooming and in their falling, from the poet :himself, nut neither is it a dream world, an eternal world where :all is vanity. It is a world of form and colour, of change and :decay, yet it is beyond time and place, a world of truth. A verse :by Gyosei Shonin, :''All the various :''Flowers of spring, :''Tinted leaves of autumn, :''Tokens in this world :''Untainted with falsity. :The ordinary world and the world of reality are here one; life :and death are Nirvana. The great mistake of life and of poetry :is the desire to get away from things, instead of getting into :them, escaping form this world into the dream world. Yet even :this world of day-dreams, of escapist poetry, Wagnerian music :and pictures of Paradise, is also a way of life, is also, when we :realize it, the Great Way. Thus it is again that enlightenment is :ignorance, salvation is damnation, Heaven and Hell are one self :place. :WHEN ACTIVITY IS STOPPED AND THERE IS PASSIVITY, :THIS PASSIVITY AGAIN IS A STATE OF ACTIVITY. :The modern theories of repression may be taken as an example of :the meaning of this verse. When we thwart nature, suppress our :instincts, control our desires, the energy thus restricted and :yet augmented is still active, and may at any time burst forth :with volcanic force in some unsuspected direction. :''Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret. :In the poetic life precisely the same thing happens. Only the :charming, picturesque aspects of nature, only innocuous creatures :are described. :But this is only one half of life or less; this is not the Way at :all. But all day and every day, Nature is giving us all kinds of :experiences, ghastly as well as pleasant. Germs of disease are :attacking us, wives are unfaithful, children ungrateful, the :cesspool awaits us, cats catch mice, and men kill one another. In :tragic drama, a great deal of this is expressed, but in general :poetry, vast tracts are omitted. A glance at the list of subjects :for Haiku the author's "Haiku", four vols. shows us how :limited they are. Here and there a snake shows its head, a :dustbin or a corpse appear, but these are rare until we come to :modern times. :But whatever the subject may be, there must be what Wordsworth :calls "a wise passiveness", that is, an active rest, such as we :find described in the following haiku: :''I came to the flowers; :''I slept beneath them; :''This is my leisure. : ~ Buson ~ :In regard to everything, the double, compensatory use of things :must never be lost sight of. In summer, we like airy, spacious :rooms. but the ceiling is low and the walls press in on us. Let :us bear it gladly: :''My hut has a low ceiling: :''What happiness, :''In this winter seclusion! : ~ Buson ~ :"Every ceiling is a good ceiling", not merely sometimes, but :always, for this means that it is good by the mere fact of being :what it is. And what is it? It is a no-ceiling, it is nothing, it :is everything, it is what we make it, -- and yet it is a ceiling, :and a low ceiling at that, in all the four seasons, hot in summer, :snug in winter. :REMAINING IN MOVEMENT OF QUIESCENCE, :HOW SHALL YOU KNOW THE ONE? Not only movement and quiescence but enlightenment and illusion, life and death and Nirvana, salvation and damnation, profit and loss, this and that, -- all these are our lot and portion from moment to moment, if we do not realize that the Great Way is one and indivisible however we delude ourselves that we have divided it. 'NOT THOROUGHLY UNDERSTANDING THE UNITY OF THE WAY, 'BOTH (ACTIVITY AND QUIESCENCE) ARE FAILURES. In other words, mere activity, activity without quiescence, mere quiescence without its inner activity, are no good, neither has its proper quality and function. Freedom is impossible without law, man is nothing without God, illusion non-existent except for enlightenment, this is this because that is that. ut freedom and law, illusion and enlightenment, this and that are two names of one thing. Unless this is realized (in practical life) none of these is its real self. This is not this until and unless it is that; only when the two are one are they really two. In practical life, this means that the composure we feel at home among our family, is only an illusion that is broken when we go out into the world and meet with vexation and disappointment, becoming irritated and depressed. Our activity when playing chess is not the true activity, as we see when we are beaten and our opponent's face and voice become hateful to us. It lacks the balance that preserves the mind from spite though we properly enough feel gloomy at losing. In the poetical life it is equally important that we realize, through each all of the senses, that true diversity is the unity. Even in the scientific world, the nature, for example, of a many-legged caterpillar is only understood when we know it is a six-legged insect. The nature of feathers, skin, nails, scales, and so on is perceives when we find that they are all one thing. The poet delights is all the many names of things, because he knows in his heart that as Laotse said, The name that can be named is not an eternal name. All the various Difficult names, -- Weeds of Spring. ~ Shado More specifically referring to the present verse of Sengtsan, we may note that the poet has to regulate his creative and receptive functions, that is, to unify them, otherwise the true fruit of each will be list. On the one hand we get the effusions of Swinburne, of Keats and Shelley, with their kaleidoscope of words; on the other, the didactic and descriptive verses that have nothing of the author in them, only the outside and shell of things. A great many haiku suffer from the absence of the life of the poet himself, whose abnegation is excessive, for example: The thatcher Is treading the fallen leaves Over the bed-room. ~ Buson 'IF YOU GET RID OF PHENOMENA, ALL THINGS ARE LOST; 'IF YOU FOLLOW AFTER THE VOID, YOU TURN YOUR BACK ON THE '''SELF-LESSNESS OF THINGS. In this translation, the first is taken as things as they appear to us, the second as Real Things; the first as Emptiness, unreality, the second as the Real Self-less Nature of things. If we suppose that all things are illusion, that everything is meaningless in the ordinary sense of the word, we are misunderstanding the doctrine that all is mind, and losing our grasp on the reality outside us. The difficulty is to hold firmly in the mind the two contradictory elements. In the early morning we work out into the garden and see a spider finishing its web. With skill and assiduity all is completed, and it sits in the centre, a thing of beauty with its duns and deep blue of arabesque designs. A butterfly flits by, drops too low and is immediately struggling in the mesh. The spider, though not hungry, approaches, seizes it in his jaws and poisons it. He returns to the centre of the web, leaving a mangled creature for a future meal. A nation conquers the then known world and organizes it with intelligence and ability; a great man appears, is caught and nailed to a cross, a spectacle for all ages and generations. These two examples are identical, despite the addition of intelligence, morality, and religion to the second. Both are to be seen exactly in the same way though with differing degrees of intensity. Whether your children are killed by God (allias an earthquake) or by God (allias a robber) or by God (allias old age) the killing is to be received in the same way. One's attitude to the earthquake and to the robber as such is different, since these two things are intrinsically different. In the poetical attitude we must have the same lack of censure. Our response to things must be similar to that of Maupassant, Somerset Maugham, D.H.Lawrence, Thomas Hardy, in so far as they have no hatred for the villains or love of the heroes. Page 2